Decline or not to decline

[Terri129]

Actual scenario: host receives booking inquiries for dates that are already blocked or booked. Host declines the bookings. Airbnb threatens to suspend host for declining too many bookings.

[Terri129]

There were two other requests since March 2021 and both times the dates requested were already blocked.

[Colleen253]

@Terri129 If they were all blocked then this must be a glitch or something is going wrong when you place the block. What you should do is take a screenshot when you block dates, and if you then get a request for those dates, contact Airbnb by chat and show them the block. They can remove the request for you and you won’t get dinged. 

[Emilia42]

This doesn’t make any sense to me; right now it is impossible for me to select a blocked date on your calendar (which has always been the case) so I cannot submit a request (or inquiry) for any blocked date range. The dates must not have been truly blocked at the time the request was submitted.

[Terri129]

The dates were blocked. I'm glad it hasn't happened to you.

[Mark116]

Maybe it is one of those list specific glitches?  More than one host who posts here have said that dates will sometimes magically unblock themselves.  I can't see how it could be anything but this.  As crazy as Airbnb is, I don't believe they would intentionally sanction allowing 2 guests to book the same set ofdates.

[Terri129]

The engineers are looking into it. I'll post their results when I get them. 

[Colleen253]

@Mark116 Yep, glitches are not unheard of. While I haven’t experienced the same issue as @Terri129,  I have had my check in time spontaneously revert to flexible, and had my IB requirement boxes spontaneously unchecked. I look at my settings daily now. 

[Sarah977]

I've also read posts where the host says dates that showed as blocked on the host's calendar were appearing as available on the listing calendar or vice versa.

[Colleen253]

@Sarah977 That’s why I asked @Terri129 if she had any other dates that were blocked, as we could look at her calendar from the outside and test.